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Legalizing Aurora Prostitution

The motels along the stretch of Aurora in North Seattle are hotbeds of crime and prostitution that suck the attention of the Seattle Police Department in a time of dwindling resources and budget cuts. Could legalization of the world’s oldest profession breathe new life into the neighborhood and provide a tax windfall for the City?While neighborhood residents have diligently worked to clean up the area through block patrols and increased vigilance resulting in numerous arrests, the area is still plagued with criminal activity centering around several of the “motels” along the strip and the crimes their location and condition encourage. A year ago the City launched a clean-up campaign centering on five motels owned by Dean and Jill Inman which in April resulted in a settlement regarding the Wallingford Inn, Fremont Inn, Seattle Motor Inn, Italia Motel, and Isabella Motel. The Seattle Motor Inn, a site well known to area police officers, closed in December, and for the Italia and Isabella Motels it is required that (unless sold) “all residential use must cease unless the motels are leased to a non-profit organization and used for low-income housing or emergency shelter.” Police had been called to or near the motels almost 900 times in the previous 20 months. This small victory, however, was soon followed up by a murder-suicide at the nearby West Way Motel. Just last week a disturbance at the Wallingford Inn resulted in an SPD helicopter and K9 unit being dispatched, as well as prostitution busts on the block at 92nd, 102nd and 117th.

With budgets getting tighter, necessitating cutbacks in government services and City Council and the Mayor looking for additional revenue sources, one possibility might be to address seedy motel crime, improve dangerous conditions for sex workers, free up precious police resources, and provide extra revenue for the City in one fell swoop – legalize prostitution in licensed and regulated establishments along the worst sections of Aurora Avenue.

While there is no proposal currently under consideration in Seattle, the cases used for legalizing such activities that have been successfully made around the world include protection from violence and disease for the women involved and valuable revenue for local governments. South Africa recently considered the idea in preparation for hosting the World Cup, with the police commissioner and several elected officials stating:

Theoretically so long as it’s legal, it will be easy to license, regulate, and tax. It would provide money for the country, establish some guidelines and safety precautions for the workers and their patrons, and generally allow the prostitutes more organizational capabilities, providing more safety and empowerment. There is also the issue of HIV. Legalizing prostitution could pave the way for regulations on mandatory testing for HIV and other STD’s, making it safer for both the prostitutes and their patrons. “If sex working is legalised people would not do things in the dark. That would bring us tax and would improve the lives of those who are not working.”

While the proposal was not adopted, reports from the games make it clear the non-legal trade is in full swing.

While some of these arguments may make “logical” sense (i.e. putting moral issues aside for a moment), studies of the legal industries in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and Nevada have found most of the common arguments to be questionable at best. In Australia, it is estimated that only 10% of prostitution takes place in legal establishments. The other 90% is fueled by the increased demand (since some of the stigma around the activity has been removed through government sanction), as interested men are not always willing to pay “market” prices, thus increasing the opportunity for pimps and human traffickers to expand their businesses in the surrounding areas. In Germany, human trafficking has increased 70% in the last 5 years, although some legalization supporters are asking the question if this increase is due to more effective police crackdowns on trafficking now that they have extra resources that had previously been devoted to stopping prostitution altogether. Another fear that unemployed women could be forced to accept a job at a “legal” brothel or risk losing their benefits caused a stir but was shown to be untrue. In Nevada, tax revenues for rural areas have been gobbled up by regulation and inspection costs, and other business projects in the areas have stalled due to avoidance of the regions by developers. Around the world it has been shown that just as in the case of illegal prostitution, the only ones who benefit in areas where prostitution is legal are the pimps and traffickers leading unsuspecting or vulnerable women into dangerous lives of virtual (and many cases literal) slavery.

Congratulations to the residents of Aurora neighborhoods who have refused to accept the status quo, and a hearty thanks to SPD officers who have spent so much time in the area, as well as City Attorney Pete Holmes in his aggressive prosecution of problematic motel guests and owners. The area has made tremendous progress over the past 10 years, but as recent statistics show there is still more to be done. Any police resources being spent on going after sex workers should be shifted to catching would-be customers. I’d bet a few weeks of flooding the area with undercover cops posing as women of the night and arresting everyone asking “How much?” would have an impact pretty quickly, and would certainly be a better use of our remaining tax money than continuing to go after the exploited women providing a desired service. Strangely this a somewhat opposite argument often made against drug users and dealers, but that is a topic for a different post…